Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1191929
In Process
Adam
Asked: 2019-11-27 16:32:41 +0800 CST

Dual Booting Ubuntu and Windows on Separate Hard Drives

  • 772

I have an SSD in which I already have Ubuntu 19.10 and I also have a HDD in which I want to install Windows 10.

I read all the available relevant questions about this in here, most of which where confusing at best, but I thought to give it a shot and just do the normal procedure of the installation without giving it much more thought.

After the installation of Windows 10 was complete it worked but I had the problem of Windows boot loader being on the SSD alongside Ubuntu. I want the two drives to be as separate as possible so that was not an option for me.

I formatted the HDD and deleted the Windows boot loader from the SSD so I want to do this procedure again but maintaining the two OSes separate.

So how can I do this correctly? I don't particularly care about GRUB as I am perfectly happy to get into BIOS and pick the drive I want to boot from. I also read the answer of a similar question in here suggesting that unplugging the one drive during the installation and then plugging it back in was a bad idea because the OS in the unplugged drive may not be recognized after that. So want to avoid that.

dual-boot

1 Answers

  1. I have just moved Ubuntu and Windows 10 to their own hard drives.

    To start with, both OS were on one drive that booted grub via BIOS.

    This hard drive eventually became too small.

    I disabled the hard drive and Installed Ubuntu on it's own drive.

    Then I switched to the Windows drive, removed the Ubuntu partition and restored the Windows 10 bootloader.

    Plugged the Ubuntu drive back in and ran Sudo update-grub.

    I can now boot both systems using the grub menu or boot Windows via Windows bootloader by pressing f12.

    If the Windows drive is set as first hard drive the Windows bootloader will be default and I can boot Ubuntu by pressing f12 and selecting it from the grub menu.

    I moved Windows Documents and Downloads to a partition on the Ubuntu drive as it has the most room.

    • 0